A Fairy Tale Piece of Reality

     As I have discovered by now, fairy tales aren't true. Not everyone can be a princess, fairy godmothers aren't always there when you need them, and not everything has a happy ending. However, fairy tales are rooted in truths. After all, there are some people who live in castles, men and women do occasionally fall in love, and once in a while, things turn out happily ever after. And if you can find one of these themes in our everyday world, take a chance, chase after it, and seize the moment because you might not see anything like it for a long time. Fairy tale settings are also based on elements of truth, and if you find one such place, take notice of it because hey-- it's cool.

One of the cleaner, less chaotic aisles in the bookstore. 

     That's what happened to me this weekend when my family and I drove into a nearby big city and discovered an amazing bookstore. After we had eaten lunch in a local restaurant, my parents took us down the street to a bookshop they had frequented in their college days. We stepped in side, and Oh. My. Goodness. The store was truly something out of a story book, although it wasn't exactly picture-perfect.
     You know the cluttered apothecary or the crowded shop in your favorite fantasy story? This bookstore has all of those elements, and more. The shelves are close together and filled to the brim with books. Boxes containing magazines, children's stories and historical fiction line the aisles. Scraps of paper litter the floors, and around each corner there's a footstool, originally meant to help patrons reach books, but now covered in stacks of dusty old tomes. The shelves lean in, providing an almost a claustrophobic feel to those who wander in search of a good read. The store rises for three stories, each one more chaotic than the last, and sells almost any book you can think of (and the ones you can't), if you can find it. All in all, the bookstore is a place that seems to have leapt right out of the pages of a novel. Or maybe, it's leapt right in. 
Thanks for listening,
Maggs